Augustine Herrman, Beginner of the Virginia Tobacco Trade, Merchant of New Amsterdam and First Lord of Bohemia Manor in Maryland/Chapter 7

by Leon Heck

Chapter VII

AUGUSTINE HERRMAN AND THE LABADISTS

A life of Augustine Herrman, no matter how brief, would be incomplete without an account of the extraordinary religious sect called the Labadists and the sequence of events that caused them to settle at Bohemia Manor.

The story of the Labadists is not unlike that of many other Protestant sects that grew out of the Reformation in Holland and elsewhere as a result of differences as to government, doctrines and social and religious discipline. In all its essentials Labadism did not differ much from all those other religious sects produced about the same time. Its tenets consisted of many good points, with many shortcomings that the processes of time and condition exposed. Jean de Labadie was the main guiding force of the order and after his death it disintegrated as rapidly as it arose. He was born at Bordeaux, France in 1610 and was educated at a Jesuit college. He was still young when he declared that he had visions and received messages direct from God, Who revealed to him that he was to establish a new and “only real church”. He began to lead a life of asceticism, fasting for long intervals and eating only herbs. As a result of these privations his health became impaired and his mind suffered as a consequence. He made himself so objectionable to the orthodox priests that in order to get rid of him they gave him an honorable dismissal from the Jesuit order.^[1] Henceforth Labadie became a secular priest, first in France where he met with unusual success and later in Holland where he was received with still greater honor. From Holland he went to Geneva, where he gained his most influential convert, Pierre Yvon who, after the death of Labadie, became his suc- cessor as head of the sect. At Geneva he also made converts of John Schurman and his talented and accomplished sister, Anna Maria who, it is said, read prose and verse in Arabic, Hebrew, Greek and Latin and a half dozen of the modern European languages. It was Anna Maria Schurman who wrote the principle book on Labadism, “Eucleria”.^[2] In Amsterdam, though Labadie met with unusual success in gaining new converts, he was cautioned by the magistrates to confine his ministry to his own followers. Not satisfied with such a limited following and ever eager to spread and propagate what he believed to be the true doctrines, he emigrated to Wiewerd in Friesland where the daughters of Cornelis van Arsen presented him with Malta House, an old castle. Henceforth Wiewerd became the capital of the Labadist domains and so remained as long as the sect was extant.

It appears that there was some similarity between the tenets of Labadism and Quakerism. William Penn is said to have visited Wiewerd and was impressed at the similarity of the religious and social ceremonies promulgated by Labadie to his own. Later Robert Barclay and George Keith visited Labadie and invited him and his followers to join the Quakers. The request was refused.^[3] In their social organization they were communal, owning no private property or article which they would not surrender to the organization as a whole. At first, it appears that private marriage was permitted; but as the sect developed and increased in power and influence, single and private marriage was relegated to the past and regarded as a characteristic of the old popish superstition. In Maryland the Labadists were especially hostile to private marriages, declaring that “hell was full of ordinary marriages”.^[4] They dispensed with bright-colored and showy garments and wore no ornaments. No class distinctions whatever were admitted, although the leader at all times was to be obeyed.^[5] They ate only common and coarse food and were essentially ascetic.

The communal beliefs and practices of the Labadists did not gain an active sympathy even in a city so favorable to them as Wiewerd; and before long they turned their eyes toward the New World as the only logical seat of their supposed Utopian order. By 1667 Surinam was the only colonial possession left Holland in the western continent which the Labadists thought suitable for a future residence. To this colony they determined to emigrate, preferring to remain, if possible, under the Dutch flag. The commission that was sent to the Guianas to seek a spot for settlement returned with such disparaging reports to the effect that the Dutch colony was filled with all kinds of crawling and biting insects; that their lives would be constantly endangered by wild animals; that the air was tainted with sickly odors; and that “snakes ran through the houses like mice in Holland.”^[6] Although one of the principal tenets of the Labadist faith held that mankind should return to a primitive mode of civilization, there were few of the sect who were willing to brave the extremities of Nature as had been described by the messengers from Dutch Guiana.

They next turned their attention to New York, until lately the capital of the Dutch domains of North America and a town still essentially Dutch. Many of the Labadists assumed, probably not without good cause, that the English conquerors of New York would not look with favor upon their arrival nor countenance their communal way of living. Others contended that New York was unsuited because tobacco was raised on Manhattan Island and their tenets forbade the use of that commodity. Yet there seemed to be no other Dutch community in the New World to which they might emigrate. The head of the sect at Wiewerd deemed it advisable to send two of their members to New York to investigate conditions and if they found them suitable for a permanent residence to barter for land for the Labadist colony.

Peter Sluyter and Jasper Dankaerts were selected for the mission. From the day of their sailing from Amsterdam, June 8, 1679 to the day of their arrival back in Wiewerd, October 12, 1680, they kept a detailed journal of their trip.^[7] Although this journal was written by men who saw the country through half-fanatical eyes, it has many merits and is a most valuable document in giving us glimpse, distorted as it is, of early colonial life and customs of America. In places, on the other hand, it seems certain that the real facts were so twisted and distorted so as to meet the approval of semi-neurotic minds, as to render such sections of the journal worse than useless.

In the entry for Wednesday, October 18, 1679 this interesting note appears, the diarist little suspecting at the time that upon the incident narrated was to depend the future of the Labadist movement in America:

 

“From this time until the 22nd. of October nothing special took place, except that we spoke to one Ephraim, a young trader who was just married here, and who intends to go with his wife to the South river, where he usually dwelt, for which purpose he was only waiting for horses and men from there. He tended us his services and his horses, if we would accompany him, and offered to carry us in his own boat everywhere on that river, from the falls (of the Delaware) to which we would have to travel by land, and where the boat would be waiting for him to take him down the river; since he himself would have to touch at many places on the river, in going down. As Bowman, who was going there with horses, did not make his appearance, we accepted the offer with thankfullness, waiting only for the time.”^[8]

 

This “one Ephraim” was no other than Ephraim Herrman, the eldest son of Augustine Herrman, heir to Bohemia Manor, who we suppose was to return to his home by way of the Delaware River and the road mentioned in the previous chapter. According to further annotations in the diary, Ephraim Herrman took much interest in the two Labadists as they journeyed down to Maryland, and subsequently proposed that the sect settle on or near Bohemia Manor.

They arrived in New Castle by December 1st and the next day they visited the village of St. Augustine. “We find”, they wrote in their journal, “it well situated and would not badly suit us. There are large and good meadows, and marshes near it and the soil is quite good.”^[9] With a letter of introduction to Augustine Herrman from his son, Sluyter and Dankaerts left New Castle by way of the newly constructed road between that settlement and Bohemia Manor. On the way to Herrman’s house they met Casperus, his second son, who fell into conversation with the religionists and who appears to have been charmed with their peculiar ideas of society. He promised Sluyter and Dankaerts that he would arrange an interview for them with his father. In the middle of the afternoon of December 3 they arrived at the manor house where they delivered Ephraim’s letter to the old lord.

“Becoming thus acquainted”, they wrote, “he showed us every kindness he could in his condition, as he was very miserable both in soul and body.^[10] His plantation was going much into decay, as well as his body for want of attention. There was not a Christian man, as they term it, to serve him; nobody but negroes. All this was increased by a miserable, doubly miserable wife; but so miserable that I will not relate it here.^[11] All his children have been compelled on her account to leave their father’s house. He spoke to us of his land, and said he would never sell it or hire it to Englishmen,^[12] but would sell it cheap, if we were inclined to buy. But we satisfied ourselves and him by looking at it then, hoping that we might see each other on our return. We were directed to a place to sleep, but the screeching of the wild geese and other wild fowl in the creek before the door prevented us from having a good sleep, though it answered.”

Herrman gave the two Labadists passports that authorized them to travel anywhere in Maryland. The following entry in the diary perhaps as well as any shows the extreme neuroticism sometimes attained by these Labadist representatives:

 

“The lives of the planters of Maryland and Virginia are very godless and profane. They listen neither to God nor his commandments and have neither church nor cloister. Sometimes there is someone who is called a minister who does not, as elsewhere, serve in one place, for in all Virginia and Maryland there is no city or a village, but travels for profit and for that purpose visits the plantations through the country and there addresses the people . . . you hear often that these ministers are worse than anybody else, yea, and are an abomination.”^[13]

 

Sluyter and Dankaerts remained in Maryland a few months longer, making Bohemia Manor their headquarters, where they were received with courtesy and respect. As time passed, however, the ardor with which Herrman received his guests began to wane. Their bombastic and oftentimes entirely false statements about his friends and neighbors did not tend to improve their relations. Nor really did their peculiar social and religious views have much in common with an aristocrat of Herrman’s temper. Little by little, too, did he put off the actual sale of the property he had promised them.^[14] When the Labadists insisted upon the conveyance, Herrman flatly refused. They left Maryland in 1680 and Herrman thought that he was rid of them for good. But three years later they returned, bringing with them one hundred of their order. In 1684 they instituted a suit against Herrman for the land he had heretofore promised them and were successful.^[15]

Ephraim Herrman, as the eldest son, was according to Herrman’s will heir to Bohemia Manor with the title of “lord”. When, however, Ephraim joined the Labadists, forsaking his young wife, his father made a codicil to the will, condemning the sect in the strongest language, named three trustees and directed that after his death they guard the property lest Ephraim give it all away to the Labadists.^[16] It is said that when Ephraim Herrman fully determined to join the Labadists and live as one of them, his father pronounced a curse upon him, declaring that he would not live two years longer. Tradition has it that Ephraim repented of his action and returned to his wife. But he lived until 1689, three years after his father’s death; and it was believed by some that his mind was partially deranged.^[17]

The tract of land which the Labadists bought consisted of some thirty-seven hundred acres, comprising land east of Bohemia Manor proper, of the highest fertility.^[18] Here the hundred-odd Labadist emigrants from Holland settled, raising grain and tobacco, which plant they no longer detested since it was bringing in a fat income. The future of the Labadist movement in America was closely connected with the fortunes of the House of Herrman. Sluyter was installed as head of the sect and his wife became a kind of mother superior. In 1722 Sluyter died with no one caring to take his place and five years later there were none who professed to the faith. Samuel Bayard bought some of the land, in which family it has remained to the present time.

Nor did the fortunes of the mother church in Holland prosper more than the New World colony. Three sisters of Lord Semmelsdyk remained true to the faith, but upon the death of the last of them in 1725, the church of the Labadists became extinct; and it is interesting to note that the two branches of the sect went out of existence within three years of one another. Since that time many similar religious sects have been born, blossomed and faded away and passed into oblivion. But the Labadists with their peculiar religious and social beliefs and sharp tongues will always be remembered in America because many of the most prominent families of northeast Maryland and Delaware trace their ancestry back to the original settlers of the colony at Bohemia Manor.

 

1. The Labadists of Bohemia Manor, Maryland Historical Magazine, Vol. I (1906). p. 338.
2. Jones, B. B. The Labadist colony in Maryland, p. 13, note 2.
3. Maryland Hist. Mag., Vol. I. p. 339.
4. Memoirs of Long Island Hist. Soc., Vol. I (1867). p. xxxvi.
5. Compare communal customs of the Labadists with those of the Separatist Society of Zoar, Tuscawaras County, Ohio, 19th century.
6. Maryland Hist. Mag., Vol. I. p. 340.
7. Translated by Henry C. Murphy and published in Vol. I, Memoirs of Long Island Hist. Soc.
8. Ibid. p. 153.
9. Ibid. p. 193.
10. Beyond a doubt highly exaggerated. It appears that the Labadist representatives were inclined to regard all but their own order, “miserable in soul and body”.
11. Herrman’s second wife, Catherine Ward. Highly exaggerated.
12. Inasmuch as Herrman’s whole career was essentially pro-English this statement is probably a misrepresentation of fact.
13. Long Island Hist. Soc., Vol. I. p. 218. This and the foregoing invectives sound much like those written by Anne Royall a century later.
14. Maryland Hist. Mag., Vol. I. p. 341.
15. Ibid.
16. These trustees were three of Herrman’s neighbors.
17. Maryland Hist. Mag., p. 342.
18. Johnston, George, History Cecil County, Md. (1881). p. 93.